Having a father who's full-time job is a truck driver comes with lots of difficulties. Some are more expected than others. Here are just a few of the difficulties I have experienced:
Lack of Family Time
When it comes to being a truck driver and having a family there is a choice that has to be made. Either you give up some of the time you spend at work and have some quality time with your family or you choose to work. You are most likely never going to have weekends off and your kids, if you have any, will miss you terribly and wonder where their dad is all the time. My father never had off on the weekends. He typically had Wednesday and Thursday off but I had school and he was always too tired to spend any time with me when I got home from school. Regardless of my stepmom fighting for his attention as well, she always got it.
There wasn’t enough hours in the day to spend with both. He went to sleep usually around 9pm and had to get up around 2 or 3am, depending on what time he needed to start. I felt like my dad never cared enough to take a day off and stay home with me. I always felt pushed to the side and that he loved work more than he did his family.
The Curse Word - “Snow”
Every time we were supposed to get snow I knew he wouldn’t be home. He delivers milk so he is considered a necessity even if we were in a state of emergency. Every snow storm he was out and driving. He would deliver anywhere from Pittsburgh to Camden to Washington DC to New York. There would be times he wouldn’t make it home because he got stuck out in an area and he ran out of driving hours. It always made me nervous when he wasn’t able to come home. I would always make sure I would talk to him before I went to sleep if he wasn’t able to make it home just so I knew he was safe. The many horror stories about people on the road and how careful you always need to be careful didn’t make it any easier. If the weatherman said the word “snow” we already knew it was going to be a night without dad.
Bring Your Parent To School Day/Career Day
Whenever it came around to the day when we got to bring a parent to school and they would talk about their jobs it was saddening. I would get so upset seeing my friends and classmates bring their parents in. The smile on their faces would make me want to cry. My friends would always ask me what my parents did for work and it wasn’t always easy to say, “My dad is a milkman/drives a truck” or “my mom doesn’t work.” I wanted to be so proud and say, “my dad is a teacher” or something else other than a truck driver. The amount of pity I received when I said it made me so angry. I wanted to bring my dad to school but he never could make it because of work. I felt so alone.
It was never easy having a truck driver as a father because I was not a priority in his life. Work always came first and it didn’t seem fair. I don’t want my son to ever feel like he isn’t a priority in my life. There is so much I want my son to not go through that I did as a child. I want him to have a better childhood than I did. If I could go back and change the things I have done as a child I would. There are times I feel like never being home was a good thing because I didn’t have anything to go home to. All I felt I had was a bed, my animals, along with the fighting I tried to avoid as much as possible but never worked.
